Ecommerce Articles & Videos

  • Show Prices for Common Scenarios

    B2B sites often have overly complex pricing structures or can't show prices at all. To help prospects with early research, list representative cases and their prices.

  • One Billion Internet Users

    The Internet is growing at an annualized rate of 18% and now has one billion users. A second billion users will follow in the next ten years, bringing a dramatic change in worldwide usability needs.

  • The Slow Tail: Time Lag Between Visiting and Buying

    Users often convert to buyers long after their initial visit to a website. A full 5% of orders occur more than 4 weeks after users click on search engine ads.

  • Amazon: No Longer the Role Model for Ecommerce Design

    Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world's largest and most established ecommerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design.

  • 8 Steps to Prepare for the Holiday Shopping Season

    Reduce the bounce rate for organic landing pages, collect data to manage PPC for maximum ROI, and take 6 other steps to maximize your site's holiday sales potential before it's too late.

  • Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order

    Unless you have explicit links to product pages from article content, users who visit articles directly from search engines might never realize that you sell related products.

  • After the Buy Button in E-Commerce

    The best way for e-commerce sites to increase subsequent orders is to treat customers well after they place their initial order.

  • Celebrating Holidays and Special Occasions on Websites

    Even small holiday decorations can increase joy of use and make websites feel more current and more connected to users' lives and physical environment. The key is to commemorate without detracting from your users' main reasons for visiting the site.

  • Is Poor Usability Killing E-Commerce?

    User success rates on e-commerce sites are only 56%, and most sites comply with only a third of documented usability guidelines. Given this, improving a site's usability can substantially increase both sales and a site's odds of survival.

  • Helping Users Find Physical Locations

    When we asked users to find a nearby store, office, dealership, or other outlet based on information provided at a parent company's website, users succeeded only 63% of the time. On average, the 10 sites we studied complied with less than half of our 21 usability guidelines for locator design.

  • Profit Maximization vs. User Loyalty

    Instead of maximizing the profits from an individual visit it is better to encourage loyal users and establish non-monetary differentiation and frequent-user programs.

  • Web Research: Believe the Data

    Much is known about Web user behavior, yet research findings are often ignored in actual projects. Examples: up-front customer registration doesn't work; frequency of use and effectiveness of Web marketing methods are negatively correlated.

  • Why People Shop on the Web

    A survey of 1,780 people who have bought something on the Web found that convenience and ease of use are the main reasons to shop on the Web. Non-buying visits (product research) are important to shoppers.